


the hands on the clock keep ticking

by violetmessages



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gwen Cooper & Ianto Jones Friendship, M/M, Taken By The Rift, Time Travel, there is five seconds of gwen/ianto in here but I promise its not long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26691238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetmessages/pseuds/violetmessages
Summary: They all knew it could happen to anyone. They’d all seen the proof. Even if it happened to a miniscule amount of the population, it was still a possibility.But they had grown complacent. They had forgotten that they too were also at the mercy of the Rift, that the Rift did not make an exception for those who knew its existence.They had forgotten until they were faced with it themselves.In which Gwen and Ianto get sent back to 1969 by the Rift.
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams, Ianto Jones/Original Character(s), Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 27
Kudos: 70
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: Bingo Fest 2020





	the hands on the clock keep ticking

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you SO MUCH to Nik (aka princessoftheworlds) for being a wonderful beta and an even more wonderful person! I'm so sorry that I don't know how commas work and you had to fix almost all of them.

They all knew it could happen to anyone. They’d all seen the proof. Even if it happened to a miniscule amount of the population, it was still a possibility. 

But they had grown complacent. They had forgotten that they too were also at the mercy of the Rift, that the Rift did not make an exception for those who knew its existence. 

They had forgotten until they were faced with it themselves. 

* * *

“I don’t think there’s anything here. I’m not picking up any radiation from the scanner,” said Ianto. In his hands, he held a small detector and was moving it from side to side. 

“Well, then let’s tell Jack that it was a bust and go home,” said Gwen impatiently. She looked a bit harried, and Ianto wondered why. 

“Doing all right?” he asked her. 

“Fine. Just a bit homesick, that’s all,” she replied. 

Ah, that must be it, he thought. They both hadn’t left the Hub in forty-eight hours after an unscheduled lockdown had triggered. He had accidently dropped an unknown artifact and trapped them all inside. Truthfully, he was homesick as well, and more importantly - tired of being inside the Hub. 

Which was why Jack had sent them both out to investigate a Rift flare, promising to let them go home afterwards. 

He turned back to Gwen.

“Right, let’s go then,” he said.

Immediately he heard a rumbling sound and spun in its direction. Gwen grabbed his arm, and he opened his mouth to tell her to run before a shimmery golden glow enveloped his senses and he blacked out. 

He awoke to a very strange sight. He was lying on what appeared to be a sidewalk, next to a busy street, and clearly not in Penarth anymore. He noted, with great relief, that Gwen was next to him and appeared unharmed. He tapped her lightly, and she awoke. 

Getting to his feet, Ianto took in his surroundings. He noticed that there were people walking by them all around, not even caring that both him and Gwen were lying on the ground, not five seconds ago, simply walking past them. A loud hum of noise was constant in the air, probably coming from the near thousands of people around them and the sound of cars driving past them on the street alongside. They were flanked on either side by large brick buildings, some being stores, others looking like flats. 

To his right, he saw that they had been lying in front of a brick building with a sign that said “Gold’s Ninety-Nine Cents Store” 

“Where are we?” Gwen asked, looking shocked. 

“Not in Penarth,” he responded. “The last thing I remember is telling you to leave before-”

“-a golden glowing light,” Gwen finished for him. They looked at each other for a minute before Ianto realized what had just happened. 

“The Rift!”

Gwen’s eyes widened in shock. They had been taken by the Rift. Taken, and deposited somewhere else. Scanning his surroundings, he found that everyone around them seemed humanoid, so he really couldn’t tell if they were on Earth or not. 

“Excuse me-” he called after a man who walked past them. “Where are we?”

The man rolled his eyes at him. 

“Lower East Side,” he responded in an American accent. “Fucking tourists,” 

He began to walk away. 

“Wait! Which city are we in?” Ianto asked after him?

“You don’t know what city you’re in?” he asked incredulously. 

“Please,” said Ianto. 

“New York,” he said annoyedly. Then he walked off, shaking his head. 

“New York?” Gwen asked. 

“So we’re on Earth - I think,” he responded. “We should find out what year it is-”

“-Excuse me?” Gwen had already walked away slightly, talking to a short blonde woman. “What year is it?”

The woman looked at her weirdly and continued walking. 

“Please?” Gwen called after her. She didn’t respond. Gwen turned to another woman near them, repeating the question. 

“1969,” the woman said curtly, before walking away. 

“Oh my goodness-”

“-1969,” Ianto said. “Ok, well, that’s not bad I suppose-”

“-How is this not bad, Ianto?” Gwen shrieked. 

“We’re still on Earth and we’re still alive. We could have been like Jonah Bevan - transported into space without any hope of rescue.”

“Yes,” Gwen said, looking more hopeful. “Jack will come find us. We just need to wait. We’ll be fine in no time”

It was a nice thought. However, they were, of course, wrong. Because this was Torchwood.

If something could go wrong, it would. 

* * *

The first thing they needed to do was to find a place to stay. Ianto knew that Jack could take a little time to get them - his vortex manipulator didn’t work, so he would have to call the Doctor - and who knew how long that would take. Jack had once told him a story about a friend of his, who used to travel with the Doctor. 

“He brought her back a whole year later,” Jack had said. “But he thought it was just a day.”

Explaining that to Gwen had taken a little longer. However, she finally gave in, realizing that Jack could not possibly find them in one day, and they might have to stay in 1969 for a little while. Between the two of them, they had a total of fifteen pounds, Ianto’s useless credit cards, a wedding ring, and his stopwatch. They’d have to pawn something.

Getting directions to a pawn shop proved to be challenging. Neither of them had ever been to New York, much less in the 1960s, and no one seemed to be willing to talk to them. Finally, an older woman from one of the shops nearby took pity on them and directed them to a nearby pawn shop. 

There, Ianto parted with his dearly beloved stopwatch for twenty dollars. He watched dismally, as the owner took it away to be sold to someone else, and pocketed the money frowning.

Gwen must have noticed, because she took his hand and gave it a squeeze as they exited the shop. 

“What do you reckon we should do next?” she asked.

“Probably find some place to sleep for the night. We should have asked the man in the shop," he responded. Gwen gripped his hand as they walked aimlessly down the street.

“Ok, well come on then; let’s go in here,” she said, pointing to a small restaurant. “We can get something to eat and then ask them if they know a place we can stay.”

They entered the shop. The woman behind the counter took their orders and gave Gwen directions to a nearby motel while their sandwiches were being made. She shooed them away when another customer walked in, but by that time their food was ready. 

Sitting opposite each other in hard plastic seats, Ianto unwrapped his sandwich. 

“Oh, it’s got tomatoes,” he said in disappointment. 

Gwen laughed at him. “Well, you did order that sandwich,” she teased. 

“Yes, but I didn’t know there were going to be tomatoes in it.”

“Oh, give them here. I’ll eat them,” Gwen said, smiling. He picked them off, one by one, and dropped them on her plate.

“What is it with you and vegetables?” she asked.

“Don’t like the texture.” He grimaced, then bit into his sandwich. Unsurprisingly, now that the tomatoes were gone, it tasted delicious. 

“How long do you think it’ll take Jack?” she asked him. 

“Don’t know. Could be days, could be months,” he responded. _Could be years, or worse: never,_ he thought quietly to himself. 

“Well then, seeing how we only have twenty dollars, should we, I don’t know, plan?”

“Eighteen fifty now,” he said.

“Exactly. And if it’s - hopefully not months - but if it does, should we get jobs or something?”

“I think we might have to. This isn’t enough to sustain us for a week, much less a month. I don’t know-” 

“Ok, I know what we have to do. We need a game plan!” Gwen cut him off. 

“A game plan?” he repeated incredulously. 

“Yes! Wait here,” she said before getting up. In a few moments, she returned with a pen and a napkin. 

“Borrowed the pen. Look here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to write down everything we need to do, so we can do it!” Gwen said.

“How is this going to help?” he asked. 

“Humor me, I’m a visual learner.”

“Ok.” he said. “We need to find a place to live, but we probably need jobs, and they’ll want a deposit, so we need that money first, but we won’t-”

“Ok, stop - this is why I said we need a game plan. We’ll flounder in circles otherwise. So, the first thing we need to do is find jobs. How should we go about doing that?”

“They have newspapers in 1969; we can look there.”

“Yes. Oh, and I saw a million help wanted signs, so we can always go to those,” she responded. “Oh damn, they won’t have any record of our degrees here.”

“Wouldn’t matter for me anyway,” he said. She looked at him curiously. “I didn’t go to uni.”

“Ah,”

“Yep.”

“Well it’s not an issue, we’re in the same boat,” she said and wrote down JOBS on the napkin. 

“Next?” she asked. 

“We need a place to live.”

She wrote down PLACE TO LIVE. 

“And?”

“Some more clothes?” 

She wrote down CLOTHES on the napkin and looked at him expectantly. 

“I think that’s about it,” he said maudlinly. 

“Nope, we’re missing one thing,” she said, and wrote down GET RESCUED BY JACK on the napkin. “We can do this, right?” She looked at him pleadingly. 

Ianto reached across the table to hold her hand. He understood that Gwen needed reassurance, and the best way to offer her comfort was through touch.

“Course we can. Don’t worry; Jack will find us in no time.”

* * *

“It’ll be ten dollars a night,” said the concierge. “We serve dinner at seven, so you’ve missed it already.”

“That’s fine,” Ianto said. He handed over the money, and picked up the key. 

“New in town?” he asked, eyeing Gwen funnily. “Sorry, you look the type.”

“Yes,” Gwen responded promptly. 

“Yeah, I could tell. How long have you folks been married?”

“She’s my sister,” Ianto replied. 

“Oh sorry, didn’t mean to offend you,” he responded, then turned to Gwen and gave her a salacious smile. “If you need anything-”

“-We’ll be fine. Come on Gwen,” Ianto snapped, and led Gwen away. She looked at him oddly. 

“What?” he asked her

“What was that?” she responded, smiling. 

“I didn’t like him.” he said, and thankfully, she dropped it. 

Later that night, as they laid next to each other on the lumpy bed, Ianto tried to think of the chances of them actually getting home. He thought back to the reports of Torchwood operatives that had been lost to the Rift. None of them had ever been found. 

_None of them had Jack,_ he consoled himself. But that wasn’t true, was it. Jack had been there. Jack now had access to the Doctor, but who knew if he would help at all? What if he deemed them a lost cause.

What if they could never get home. 

He suddenly had a mental image of himself in sixty years, coming back to the Hub after they had disappeared, and Jack looking at him and Gwen in pity - explaining that he simply couldn’t have helped them. Then being shunted off to a nursing home, their jobs already replaced by newer, shinier models that touched his coffee machine, and could run faster and fuck better than he ever would be able to. 

Gwen pushed him lightly. “Shove over,” she murmured. 

“Sorry,” he said, and gave her more room. 

“Don’t think too much. Go to sleep,” she ordered. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he teased her and tried his best to turn off his brain. 

* * *

1969 was an interesting time. Obviously, they had moved past egregious sexism, where Gwen wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere without Ianto present, but it showed up other places. 

Both of them had been able to find work easily, Ianto as a cashier at a delicatessen near the motel, and her as a waitress. Luckily, they hadn’t asked for any sort of paperwork, but she was pretty sure she’d only gotten the job because the manager, Mr. Peters, fancied her. He kept making passes at her, and while she’d gotten used to it with Jack - mainly because he didn’t mean anything by it - Mr. Peters, seemed like he did.

She was pretty sure the only reason he hadn’t demanded that she date him was her wedding ring, which they hadn’t pawned off yet

She also only made half as much as Ianto, and she suspected that it was because she was a woman. But she had no other options. They needed money, and she really didn’t want to have to sell her other ring.

A week after they had arrived, they moved out of the motel. Her engagement ring had gotten them about one hundred dollars, which wasn’t enough for a month’s rent. 

Luckily for them, the owners of the deli where Ianto worked were apparently very taken by him, and learning about how he and his “poor widowed sister” had come to the United States for a better life and been robbed of all their belongings, offered them a small flat above their shop for less than they would have payed elsewhere. 

Their flat was ridiculously small. It was only one room, with tan wood floors and a tiny window that they had to physically heave upwards to open. The bathroom was, well minuscule was the only word that came to mind. She had no idea how they managed to cram a small toilet, a smaller sink, and the tiniest shower into a space the size of her closet back home. The walls were painted sloppily with whitewash, it smelt of lavender cleaning solution and deli meat, and it was completely bare. 

The night they moved in, they sat on the floor, because they didn’t have a bed yet, and huddled together under a thin blanket for warmth.

“We should buy a hot water bottle or something,” Gwen said, teeth clattering. “Never thought I’d miss that motel.”

“It’s November - that’s why it’s freezing. I promise this’ll be less expensive than the motel in the future. We just don’t have enough money to turn on the heat.”

“Jack needs to hurry up,” she said.

“Gwen,” he started. “What if-”

“-No!” she shut him down. Gwen wasn’t ready to consider a future where she’d never be able to see Rhys again. “We can’t - we’ll be fine, just you see.” 

“I miss coffee,” he said, changing the subject. “The next thing we buy better be a coffee machine.”

“I miss Torchwood. Waitressing is boring. Mr. Peters keeps giving me these looks, like if I just look past his podgy face and receding hairline, I might start to fancy him. I’m considering shoving a spatula up his arse.”

He laughed. “I miss Weevil hunting. You just don’t get that rush as a cashier.”

“Well, you also don’t get that other rush,” she teased. Ianto flushed red and turned his face away. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. 

“You know, middle of the night, hunting, an SUV that flattens all the way down,” she trailed off. Ianto snorted. 

“Pervert,” he mocked.

“Slut,” she responded, and they both burst into peals of laughter. 

“I can’t believe that I miss that SUV. Jack drives like a maniac,” he said finally. “One time someone tried to give him a parking ticket and he just shut the door in the copper’s face and drove off. I’m shocked that he hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

“That’s our Jack. A right cocky bastard, he is,” she said. “Rhys makes fun of him for not being able to drive.”

“He deserves it.”

Gwen felt a stinging pain in her chest. She missed Torchwood, and Jack, and adventure, but she could live without it. This was the first time in years that she’d gone without speaking to Rhys for more than a week. 

She missed him. Ianto was her best friend and she loved him to death, but Rhys was her other half. If he was here right now, he’d say something ridiculous and stupid but the perfect thing to cheer her up. 

And he’d probably go sock Mr. Peters in the face for her. 

* * *

The worst thing about 1969 was the technology level. They were slowly adjusting to living without technology. Cell phones didn’t exist yet, and every time Gwen and Ianto had to split up, she had terrible anxiety about something happening to him and not being able to be there. 

They didn’t have a television either, which didn’t really matter - they worked every day. But living without the Internet was hard. Whenever Gwen wanted to know something, she instinctively turned to her laptop, which obviously wasn’t there. 

She’d made a few “friends” at her job, fellow waitresses that empathized with her struggle with Mr. Peters. Tina, Mary, and Lucy were all nice, and when they learned about her “robbery,” they offered to help her as much as they were able to. But she didn’t always get their pop-culture references and inside jokes. The last time she listened to Elvis Prestley or the Beatles, she was probably five, listening with her father in the car. The closest music of that era that she actively remembered was ABBA, which hadn’t been formed yet. 

They had to be careful about “preserving the timeline." They couldn’t tell anyone about any future knowledge, because that would have consequences. Neither she nor Ianto knew what those were, but Jack had been adamant on them knowing that. She didn’t want to accidentally cause her or Ianto to not be born. 

To save money, they had just been eating leftovers from the deli that Ianto brought home. She missed eating cawl and laverbread. Rhys used to make them for her on days when they’d wake up later. No one in New York had ever heard of cawl, and when she told Tina about what laverbread was, she’d gagged and made fun of her. 

They could probably find the ingredients to make it if they looked - this was New York after all. But they wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway. 

* * *

A month after they’d been dumped in New York, Gwen finally had a little spending money. They’d been saving all that they could, eating solely from leftovers and putting all of their earnings towards buying a proper bed so that they didn’t have to sleep in the half-destroyed twin mattress that lay on the floor of their flat. 

Luckily, one of her regular customers was apparently feeling generous and tipped her five dollars. It was enough to put her plan into motion. 

To put it lightly, Ianto was having a rough time. He spent as much time as he could working. In the times that he wasn’t, he was trying to remember how to build a signalling device he had archived, one that connected to Jack’s wrist strap. He kept bringing back scraps of metal to try and work with. 

Sometimes she could hear him still working late at night. He’d pretend to go to bed with her, then wait for her to drift off before starting again. She’d yelled at him for not sleeping. It hadn’t exactly stopped him.

It was going to send Ianto into a nervous breakdown.

So that Saturday, the only day where both of them were not working, she grabbed him and forced him to exit the small flat. 

“Gwen!” he yelled.

“Nope. You’ve been working at that thing for too long without a break. You’re coming with me,” she responded. 

“Where are we even going?” he asked grumpily. 

“It’s a surprise,” she said, and led him to a cinema three blocks away.

Ianto opened his mouth and she put her hand over it quickly.

“Before you say anything about money, we can afford it. I got a pretty good tip the other day, and I want to spend it on this. So shut it.”

“I wasn’t going to-”

“-Yes, you were.”

“So, what movie are we going to see?” he asked finally.

“It’s a secret,” she smiled. “Stay here, I’ll get the tickets.”

After purchasing the tickets and a carton of popcorn which seemed to be slathered in a golden oil, they made their way to their seats.

Ianto popped a kernel in his mouth and winced.

“What the hell is on this?”

“No clue. Oh, look it’s starting,” Gwen said and pointed to the screen. The opening scene began with a woman taking off her shoes and walking.

Ianto turned to her.

“Is this On Her Majesty's Secret Service?” he whispered. Gwen nodded, and his eyes widened in excitement. He turned back to the screen in abject joy, and she popped more of the artificial popcorn into her mouth. 

She’d clearly done the right thing. All throughout the movie, Ianto had whispered trivia facts and mouthed along with his favorite lines. It was so entertaining to watch that Gwen had spent more time looking at Ianto than the actual movie itself. 

“I can’t believe you figured out what movie it was in the first five seconds!” she exclaimed as they left. “How many times have you seen it?”

“A lot,” he said. “Really, thank you Gwen.”

“No problem, sweetheart. Just promise me you won’t go crazy trying to make something that’ll explode.”

“I won’t; I promise. And I don’t think I can anyway. There’s probably some ridiculous futuristic tool that we need to make. Besides,” he said with a smirk, “what would you do without me?”

She laughed, but he was right. What would she do without him?

* * *

Most days, life was tolerable, fine even. Until Ianto got sick. 

They were making enough money to live; they just didn’t have any to spare. Which was why when Ianto got sick, Gwen had no idea what to do. 

She’d woken up next to a feverish Ianto. Usually, he was the first to rise, and the fact that he was still sleeping was concerning. Touching her hand to his forehead, she noticed that he was burning up. 

Gwen wanted to stay with him, but she couldn’t miss work, especially if Ianto wasn’t going to get paid for the day. So she woke him up, wrapped him in blankets, and went down to get soup from the deli and tell Ianto’s boss Ben that he was sick. 

“Here’s your soup,” she said, handing him the container. “Ben says that he’ll give you more soup around lunchtime, okay? And don’t forget to drink water.”

He murmured his assent, so she kissed his forehead and set out for work. When she came home that night, his fever still hadn’t broken. Which was fine, but when it didn’t break the next night either, Gwen became worried.

“You need to get better,” she whispered. “How are we supposed to time travel home if you’re sick?”

They didn’t have enough money for a doctor. All Gwen could do was spoon sickly sweet cough syrup into his mouth and buy the highest strength Ibuprofen that the shop carried. Throughout the second night, Ianto moaned in pain, and all she could do was wet a cloth in cold water and wipe his face, hoping that might bring him some relief.

When his fever finally broke on the third night, she cried in joy. 

This was her life now. No more chasing after Weevils or cleaning up after the Rift. It was waitressing, and worrying about Ianto, and praying to a god she no longer believed in in hope that they might get home soon. 

* * *

One year in, they knew each other’s habits like they’d been living together for years. 

Ianto woke up at five every morning. If it was warm outside, he’d open up the tiny window to let in fresh air and make coffee with the cheap coffee machine that they bought a couple months back. While that brewed, he brushed his teeth and took a shower. 

After, he woke Gwen up and made the only thing he knew how to make while she got ready: porridge. They ate, then he walked Gwen to the diner she worked at, before heading back to the deli. They usually had lunch together, sometimes with some of Gwen’s fellow waitresses before heading back to work. At around eight, their shifts ended, and they ate the leftover food that Ianto’s boss always sent home with him. 

After dinner on most days, they either played stupid board games or read books they’d borrowed from the library. Sometimes, they sat in silence, staring out the window or doodling on scrap paper. They couldn’t afford a television yet. 

Other times Gwen would lock herself in the bathroom and pretend to be doing her makeup when they both knew that she was crying. Those times Ianto would tactfully leave the flat to take a walk. When he came back, Gwen was usually fine again, and neither of them talked about the red-rimmed eyes they both wore. 

On Saturdays, their day off, they finished any chores left and explored the city. Neither had been to New York before, and they spent their day walking around. Once a month, if they could afford it, they took the subway to a different borough.

Ianto was...coping. 

He’d gone through it before. It seemed unfair that he’d lost two of his lovers before his twenty-fifth birthday. But life was unfair. He couldn’t expect it to change for him. He was nobody important. 

The pain that came with loss was not unfamiliar to him, and he felt it now. His hands shook, his stomach gnawed with pain, and not being with Jack hurt so much that he would rather go two rounds with a Hoix. He still hoped that Jack would come find them, but he wasn’t here right now. Losing Lisa had made him aware of what it was like to have someone you cared about ripped away from you suddenly. 

Gwen didn’t know what that was like. This was the first time that Gwen had had to deal with this kind of loss. 

So he tried to be extra kind. Sometimes he nicked little pieces of candy to give to her: the chewy caramels that she adored. He accepted the casual touches that came with being close to Gwen and tried to reciprocate as much as he could, even if it didn’t come easily to him. They were pittances compared to the hurt that they were both feeling. But that was all that he could offer her. Something to lessen the pain and to remind her that she wasn’t alone. 

It was how he could distract himself from missing Jack, by focusing all his attention on Gwen and her wellbeing. As long as she seemed fine, he could pretend that he was too. 

* * *

The first Christmas in New York went unrecognized. They had enough to do, and neither felt like celebrating. Gwen expected it to be the same this year as well. So when Tina asked her what she was doing for Christmas, she told her the truth: nothing.

“But you can’t do nothing for Christmas!” said Tina, shocked. Her large eyes widened to comical proportions. “Nah, you gotta do something. Tell you what; you can come home with me! Ma and Daddy won’t mind; it's the season of generosity after all.”

“I would, Tina, but I don’t want to leave my brother alone,” Gwen responded.

“Well, bring him too! And don’t worry about bringing a thing, our family makes so much food.” said Tina.

“Oh, I don’t know; I don’t want to intrude on your family-”

“-You’re not intruding! Daddy always says we oughta do nice things for people at this time. We’d never turn away folks who deserve to have a good holiday,” Tina insisted. 

Tempted by the offer of a free meal, they swallowed their pride and showed up at Tina’s family’s house with a bottle of the cheapest wine they could find. Thankfully, Tina’s mother, Mrs. DiAngelo, didn’t bat an eye, simply thanking them for it without complaint.

Tina had a lot of relatives, so it was relatively easier to avoid awkward stares. They stuck together, sitting with Tina and her sister Laura, who Gwen suspected had fallen a little in love with Ianto.

“Oh, I love your suit!” Laura said, trailing her fingertips up Ianto’s arm. “And my, oh my, you certainly work out. Just feel those muscles.”

Ianto gave her a polite smile.

“Ah, the strong and silent type,” gushed Laura. Ianto’s smile remained on his face, but she could tell that his expression was getting more pinched by the minute.

“So, Laura. Where do you work?” Gwen asked, trying to draw attention away from Ianto.

“I’m a receptionist. It’s a nice job, and it gives me plenty of free time to spend with a boyfriend. Not that I have one!” she added looking directly at Ianto. “You know, I just keep waiting for the right man to show up in my life, but he hasn’t yet.”

“It’ll happen for you.” Gwen patted her sympathetically.

“Imagine if I met him right now! Don’t you think that would be a Christmas miracle?” Laura asked, batting her eyelashes at Ianto.

“Yes. Imagine,” he responded flatly.

Then Mrs. DiAngelo called Laura and Tina into the kitchen to help bring out the food. Laura pouted, but she left, smiling at Ianto widely. 

Ianto turned to Gwen. 

“She keeps touching me!” he hissed under his breath.

Gwen bit her lip, trying not to smile. 

“Are you going to help or not?” Ianto said.

“Why, you don’t want her to press you up against the coat room? Could be fun!” she said in a singsong voice.

He glared at her, and she couldn’t stop the laughter anymore. His offended expression made the whole thing funnier. 

“I’ll make sure she doesn’t sit next to you, sweetheart,” she said, patting him on the arm. His face relaxed, and he smiled at her. 

“Ten dollars she’ll ask you out before the end of the evening herself,” she couldn’t help teasing. Ianto’s glare came back, and she laughed again. 

Dinner was nice. She and Ianto didn’t contribute much to the conversation, but it flowed easily. Tina’s father argued with her uncles about American politics, which she knew little about. Mrs. DiAngelo asked them some polite questions about where they were from, then discussed family gossip with the rest of the table. 

After dinner, Ianto offered to help Mrs. DiAngelo with the dishes, so Gwen sat with Tina and Laura, waiting for him so they could leave. Tina ardently compared Twiggy’s wardrobe to her own while Laura critiqued her outfit choices. Gwen picked at the edge of the sofa and chimed in every once in a while. 

Finally, Ianto came out of the kitchen. 

“Would you like to know my phone number?” Laura asked Ianto. 

Ianto scrunched up his eyebrows. “Why would I need your phone number?”

“Maybe you could call it sometime,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him. 

“Oh. I don’t have a phone,” responded Ianto, then turned to Tina. “Thank you for having us over. Goodbye!”

“You owe me ten dollars,” muttered Gwen as they were leaving. 

Ianto shushed her. 

Truthfully it was nice to have some “girl talk,” even if it wasn’t about the decade she was from. Ianto was lovely, but he would never talk to her about fashion or makeup. It had been a while since she’d had a conversation like that, and the change was refreshing. 

She missed her life. It wasn’t just Rhys. It was the little things that she couldn’t do anymore that made it so much harder to keep going. There were no early morning pastries that Jack tried to steal off her plate, no more laughing at Banana Boat’s ridiculous decisions, and no more jibes at Trina’s love life. 

She couldn’t remember the last time she had a pastry. Hell, she couldn’t even remember what her favorite blueberry lemon pastry tasted like. 

If missing Rhys was the gaping bullet wound in her chest, the memories of things she couldn’t do anymore were like a million papercuts. On their own, she might have survived, but combined with the bullet wound, it was near fatal. 

_Jack, you need to come find us soon,_ she thought. I _don’t know how much longer I can stand this_

* * *

“Let’s go on a picnic,” said Gwen suddenly. 

They were sitting at the table, eating their oats. Gwen took a spoonful of sugar and mixed it into her bowl. She looked at him expectantly. 

“What?” he asked. 

“A picnic. You know, with a basket, and a blanket and everything. I’ve always wanted to have one.”

“A picnic?” he repeated. 

“Yes, a picnic! Keep up. We’ll need a blanket, and some food, and oh! You can read that Agatha Christie book out loud to me.”

“And why would I do that?”

“C’mon, Ianto, do you have any better ideas?”

He did not. So they packed up supplies and headed off to a nearby park. 

After amusing themselves for a couple hours by walking around, reading _The Body In The Library,_ and eating their food, Ianto laid down on the blanket next to Gwen, who sat up against a tree. 

“Did I ever tell you about me and Rhys’ first date?” she asked him. 

“Not that I remember,” he responded. 

“Well, he wanted to take me somewhere nice. So he took me to a beach. Only, he didn’t realize that it was a nudist beach,” she said laughing. 

“That’s nothing.” He laughed. “Do you remember when Jack asked me on a date?”

“No, darling,”

“He asked me when we were looking for the bomb, the one that John Hart told us about. What a stupid time to ask,” he said. 

“Well, you did say yes,” she said. “I knew I did the right thing pairing you together.”

“I suppose.”

“I mean, he did say he came back for you.”

“He came back for all of us-”

“-no, Ianto, he came back for you. Don’t you know that?”

They didn’t speak for a while. 

“Have you realized, I’ve spent more of my adult life away from Jack that I have with him. I mean, it’s been over two years. And here I am, still-”

“Still what?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

_Still hopelessly in love with him. So in love, even though it's been years since I’ve seen him._

“Still what?” she repeated.

He glared at her. She already knew, but she was just acting like she didn’t. He didn’t want to acknowledge it, because saying it out loud would mean that it was real.

“Have you ever considered that maybe I don’t want to say it-”

“-You need to say it Ianto. You can’t give up on him.” She cut him off. “We-”

“I can’t-” he choked. “Not if we never see him again-”

“-We will! Ianto I can’t - you can’t lose hope,” Gwen said, voice thick. “How can I have hope if-”

He thought for a moment. He thought about Jack and their relationship. And he thought about how Jack looked at him sometimes, as if he could discern the secrets of the universe in Ianto’s eyes. Who was he to lose hope this quickly? Jack Harkness was an impossible man, and there was no guarantee that he wouldn’t be able to find them. 

“I love him,” he said plainly. “I love him and I have hope - I have hope for you and I have hope for us.”

* * *

“Who was the first bloke you shagged?” she asked him one day from where she was lying on the bed. 

“Jack,” he responded. Then he looked at her curiously. “Why?”

“I’m bored. So, no one before Jack then? Would-” She paused for a second, turning down the pages of the magazine she was reading. “Would your family not have approved?”

“I mean, they wouldn’t have, but I - well, I only really dated women.” He paused, then added, “I say women plural, but really I mean two,”

“Oh.” she said. 

“Yeah. I suppose I was bisexual only in theory before I met Jack.”

Gwen went back to thumbing through a magazine. Ianto resumed trying to scrub a stain off their table until a question popped into his head. 

“What about you then?” Ianto asked. “Shagged any girls?”

Gwen laughed. “No, I don’t think I’m bent. I mean, women are very beautiful, and I did want to kiss my best mate Brynn when I was growing up. But that’s normal friend stuff, you know.”

“You wanted to kiss her?” he asked. 

“Yeah! I was a little obsessed with her to be honest. I always wanted to hang out with her, and I would get anxious every time she talked to me. I wanted to impress her so badly. And I also got weirdly jealous every time she talked to anyone else. But that’s normal when you’re friends with a girl,” she said. 

Ianto raised his eyebrows. “Gwen, I don’t think that’s normal friend stuff.”

“What?”

How had Gwen not figured it out yet?

“Gwen, that’s how you act when you fancy someone. Do you act that way around me?”

“Well, no,” she said, leaning up on her elbows. “But you’re not a girl,”

“Do you act that way around your other girl friends?” he asked. 

“Well - no?”

“Then I think you might be a little bent,” he said. “Just something you might want to think about.”

* * *

Four years after the night they’d been Riftnapped, they both got exceedingly drunk.

Neither acknowledged it of course. It was part of their agreement - to never speak of the horrific anniversary when it happened. 

She was exhausted. Standing on her feet every day was awful. She could only properly see Ianto in the evenings and on Saturdays. And it had been four _long_ years since she had seen Rhys. 

Today, when she walked back home, she had realized, to her horror, that she no longer remembered what his voice sounded like. And there was no way to remember. 

There was no audio clip, no recording she had of it. She was either going to be seventy or dead before she heard it again. 

She needed to be drunk to deal with that realization. So she picked up a bottle of alcohol before she went home and proceeded to get wasted with Ianto 

As she sat next to him, she realized two things. One, Gwen was buzzed enough that the world was hazy around her, and two, she was just confident enough to make a horrible decision. 

Gwen put her hands on Ianto’s chest. She stared at him intently, hoping he would come to the same conclusion that she had. Then he leaned forward and kissed her.

Ianto didn’t kiss like Rhys. He was too unfamiliar, and the taste of shitty liquor overpowered her mouth. Drunkenly, they fumbled their clothes off and sloppily snogged. If they were sober, she’d be horrified, but they were both drunk enough and aware of what this really was: a proxy shag. 

It was easy to pretend that he was Rhys while they were fucking. All she had to do was close her eyes and remember what it was like to feel him inside her. She could pretend that she was home and with the man she loved - a man she hadn’t seen in four years - and that he was the one holding her. It worked, just until Ianto shuddered and gasped a breathy “Jack” when he came. 

Afterwards, they couldn’t look at each other for a week. They were exceedingly lucky that nothing happened, that no child was conceived. They never spoke about it. 

* * *

In March of 1974, five years after the Rift had dropped them in New York, Gwen counted up the money they had saved and announced that there was enough money to guarantee them a bigger flat, or two smaller flats. 

“So, I mean - we’ve been living together for five years. Do you want to move to separate flats?” Gwen said, voice wavering slightly. 

He knew what his answer would have been five years ago. Move. Move to a different flat, keep in touch but keep at a distance. He’d liked his space, and he had had to give it up when they’d been Riftnapped. 

But he’d been alone in the world with no one but Gwen for five whole years. And in those five years, his life had changed so much that he couldn’t recognize the same person he was before. How was he supposed to operate without Gwen’s presence there with him?

They’d been living in the same tiny room for the entire time, but it looked far more like a proper home now. They had a small bed frame that they’d lifted off the street, a sofa, and a small kitchen table. Gwen had plastered the walls with magazine pictures and bought cheap lamps and a coffee table from thrift stores. Their coffee maker, Ianto’s prized possession, sat in its place of pride on the kitchen counter. 

The flat was more than just a place to sleep now. It had been their home for five years. 

He briefly worried about codependency and wondered if he was making the right decision. Had they become so reliant on each other that they’d lost the ability to function apart.Then he thought about what it might be like not to live with her. Having to sit alone in a room too big for him every night, dealing with the pain of loss. Having to spend every day by himself, stuck in a time he didn’t belong, and with people he didn’t know. At least Gwen had a few work mates. He didn’t even know anyone other than his boss. 

Living with Gwen was easy. It made him feel less alone, because he never was. Living with Gwen was knowing that someone else understood you, that someone else was similarly out of their time, and would be there for you permanently. 

“Don’t go,” he said. “I don’t want to live anywhere without you. I don’t care if we’ve been living together for five years. I like this shitty flat, however small it is. It’s our shitty place, even if the heater doesn’t always work, or the meat smells from the deli come up through the floor in the summer.”

Gwen smiled brilliantly. He wondered if she felt as relieved as he was. 

“Then I won’t go anywhere. But we should get new furniture. I’m tired of looking at the same stuff.” 

* * *

On Gwen’s thirty-fifth birthday, she brought home half a leftover pie from the restaurant and was about to enjoy it with Ianto when the lights flickered and shut off. 

“Damn it!” she cursed. “We don’t have any candles, do we?”

“None,” Ianto said apologetically. “Let’s just wrap up the food and eat it when the power turns back on.”

“No, wait! I have a better idea.”

Their flat, like many in New York, had a flat rooftop. It was technically not supposed to be occupied, but someone - not Gwen - had brought three chairs up there. To enter the top, you had to climb a ladder through the ceiling and open a latched door. 

Gwen climbed up first, took the pie from Ianto, and helped him up.

“You’ve been keeping this from me,” Ianto accused her with a grin. 

“Yup! Technically, it’s not up to code, so we could fall through. But what’s life without a little danger?”

They laughed at each other. 

Grabbing a chair, she opened up the pie container and dug in. Ianto stuck a napkin through his collar and pulled his section of the pie away from Gwen’s. 

“It’s my birthday!” she complained.

“Thirty-five years on this Earth and you still act like a seven year old,” Ianto teased. 

“I’m not the one wearing the bib!”

“I’m being neat!” Ianto complained. He forked a piece of pie into his mouth, and she moved her attention away from him and stared up into the sky. It was times like these, when she escaped onto the roof that she really had to wonder what her life had become. 

“You can’t see them,” Ianto said, interrupting her thoughts. 

“Huh?”

“You can’t see the stars,” he explained. “Too much light pollution.”

“I suppose. Still, it’s pretty to look at.”

“Really? I like the buildings better. The lights look more like stars than the ones in the sky.”

“This reminds me of my first day. Jack took me to the top of the Millenium Center,” she said. Ianto laughed. 

“He did that to me too. What is it with that man and rooftops?”

“Oh but he’d love it here,” Gwen said. “Nice long roof, subtle wind so his coat can swing dramatically in the air.”

“Like Batman.” Ianto smirked. 

“Oh most definitely. That coat is his Superman cape. I think he wears it just to look cool.” 

Ianto sighed. “1975,” he said.

Gwen looked at him, eyebrows raised in curiosity. 

“Jack is alive. He’s somewhere out there in Cardiff. And neither you nor I have even been born yet.”

“Not long for me though,” Gwen realized. “I’ve only got three years left. Do you think-” 

She paused, mind racing with an idea she had not thought of before. 

“What?”

“Do you think we should do something when I’m born? Like, I don’t know, strap a note to my chest that I give to Jack when I meet him.”

“No, you can’t!” Ianto looked at her very seriously. “You don’t remember giving Jack a note. So you can’t just make it happen. You’ll create a paradox.”

“No we won’t. Not if we do it carefully,” she reasoned. Really, this could solve all their problems. Perhaps the reason that Jack hadn’t come yet was because he didn’t know where they were. They just had to find a way to get a message to Jack through her past self, and he could find them. 

Ianto grabbed her arm and pulled her to look at him.

“What if you break the timeline and never end up joining Torchwood. How can you never join and be sent back to 1969 with me?”

“It won’t happen if we’re careful!” 

“You can’t mess with time like that; you’ll break one of those time laws Jack’s told us about.” Ianto pleaded. 

“Fucking Jack!” she yelled. “Fucking time laws. I don’t care about bloody time laws; I just want to go home!”

She burst out into tears, and Ianto put his arm around her. He rubbed her shoulders as she cried into his chest, mourning the loss of her life. When her tears had run dry, she leaned against him and stared out into the landscape of the city she’d been forced to live in. The bright lights emanating from the sea of buildings shone steadily as her heart dropped, the wetness in her eyes blurring the incandescence until they were nothing but large circles of white and yellow. 

* * *

Ianto entered their flat. 

Gwen took a good, hard look at him. She noticed that he’d finally lost the slight babyface he’d had, giving way to lean features and sharp cheekbones. His hair was still brown but had a few flecks of white here and there. 

Not that she was any better, mind. On some days, her hair seemed to have more silver than black. She’d been meaning to dye it but couldn’t find the effort to do so. 

He dropped down a brown paper bag, and she looked at him curiously. 

“What’s that?”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he pulled out a bottle and placed it on the coffee table. She raised her eyebrows. 

“Six years,” he responded wearily and dropped down onto the sofa next to her like a puppet who had just had its strings cut. 

Then the words he just said hit her. Six years. They had been here, dropped in the past for six years, and she hadn’t even noticed. She understood now, why he’d said something. 

They hadn’t spoken about the anniversary ever. Even up to the fifth year, they’d held out hope - dreamed even that perhaps the nightmare might end. That Jack would come find them with his ridiculous wrist strap or perhaps ask the Doctor to get them. It had been six years, and their hope, like sand in an hourglass, had finally dwindled. There was no more silent daydreaming, longing, yearning even, that they might get home. 

Gwen curled up next to him and wrapped her arms around him. He held her back just as tightly, head pressed in the crook of her neck. Hot tears welled up in her eyes, but she didn’t speak, tactfully ignoring the wetness dripping down her neck. 

Not once had Ianto ever cried in front of her. Oh, she knew he had - but he preferred to do it in the dead of night when he thought she was asleep, choked sobs muffed into his arms. She hadn’t tried to comfort him then, but she dutifully rubbed his back now as she held back her own tears. 

They stayed there for a while. 

“Gwen?” came Ianto’s voice, slightly muffled.

“Yes, love?” she answered. 

“I-what do we do?”

“I don’t know.”

It was the truth. But not the whole truth. 

“I love you. He tensed in her arms and she held him tighter. “Stop that. I love you and I can’t live without you. I...please don’t push me away.”

He was silent for a long time. 

Then he spoke, in the smallest voice Gwen had ever heard him in, “I couldn’t do this without you, I’d have gone mad by now. I think I would have-”

He didn’t continue, but she knew exactly what he meant. She held him even tighter, pressing him against her chest until he laughed sourly and muttered how he couldn’t breathe. 

Neither of them let go.

* * *

He was cleaning the flat when he found it. 

The paper napkin that Gwen had written their “game plan” on. The napkin was disintegrating between his fingertips. It was, after all, more than six years old. 

Six years…

He suddenly had the urge to crumple it up in his hand. How cruel of the universe to make him find that it again. The napkin taunted him, look how naive you were. Did you honestly think Jack would care to find you? Jack had probably moved on, found new employees, and was probably flirting with them this moment. Obviously one day, Ianto was going to die, and Jack would never see him again. But he had hoped to get a couple more years with him before he finally kicked the bucket. 

Obviously, he couldn’t tell Gwen. She was coping as well as the circumstances allowed, but seeing the napkin - and what was written on it - would probably send her into a spiraling breakdown. She’d just gotten over the fact that 1975 was their home now. 

He wanted to set fire to the napkin. 

He did not. 

Ianto gently folded the napkin until it fit into his palm. He put it in his pocket, and finished cleaning the flat. Then when Gwen was distracted, he took down the wastebasket to the dumpster downstairs. 

Taking out the napkin, he stared at it one last time. Then, using all the self control he had, he placed it inside their wastebasket and dumped it into the dumpster. 

It unsurprisingly didn’t make him feel better.

* * *

“How long do you wait before you have to move on?” asked Gwen.

Ianto turned to her in shock. “Are you talking hypothetically or?”

“I’m not talking about me. If your wife disappeared mysteriously and you didn’t know if she was dead or alive, how long would you wait?”

Ah, she was talking about Rhys. This was going to be a difficult decision.

“I don’t think that it’s a definite answer. I think it’s more of a case-by-case scenario,” he answered cautiously.

“Okay, here’s the case. Your wife has disappeared, and it’s been six years. What do you do?” Gwen said,staring at him intently.

“Gwen…” he trailed off. 

It was a good question. Technically, it had been six years since either of them had been in a relationship. He had no doubt that Jack had already moved on; it was a given. 

Should he have moved on as well?

Suddenly, he felt far too claustrophobic inside the small room and underneath Gwen’s grieving eyes. He couldn’t answer her questions because he couldn’t begin to understand his own feelings. How could it take him so little time to start fucking Jack after Lisa yet he clung to Jack’s memory like a dying man holding on to life? 

“I have to go,” he said to Gwen and left the room despite her protests. The walls were closing in on him. He needed fresh air.

The air was cool, a slight breeze wafting past his face, and the street lamps cast yellow shadows onto the sidewalk. Cars whizzed past him on the street alongside, and people walked by him uninterested. 

He wandered for a while. There was nowhere he could go - he certainly didn’t have any friends to turn to. His mark on the decade was six years working in a shop and a dingy flat. 

He finally ended up following a group of young men to a nightclub. The security guard didn’t bother to check his ID, which was just as well seeing that he had none. The club was dark, flashing lights everywhere, and the booming sound of disco music filled the air. 

He checked his pockets to see if he had any money and found a couple of coins, enough for maybe one drink. He sat at a small alcove, sipping the exceptionally shitty beer, and watched the dancefloor, bodies touching, moving in harmony with the loud music. It didn’t make him any happier; in fact, it made him feel worse. The music rang loudly, making his head pound, and the alcohol certainly didn’t help. 

Just as he was about to cut his losses and leave, a man sat next to him. He had a strong jaw and deepset eyes. He reminded Ianto of a blond Jack. The man placed his hand on Ianto’s arm.

“Hey,” the man said. “What’re you doing here all by yourself?”

“Drinking,” Ianto replied, and the man laughed loudly. He inched closer to Ianto, rubbing his arm tighter. 

“I love your accent. Where are you from?’ he asked. 

“Wales,” answered Ianto. 

“Oh yeah? And why is someone like you drinking all by yourself?” he asked. 

Ianto paused. Then he answered honestly. “I’m all out of options.”

“Oh that’s a shame,” he said. “You know, I’ve always considered myself a great option.”

He was attractive enough. And perhaps it would be enough to get Ianto out of his head for a few hours. 

“Would you like to prove it?” Ianto said, looking at the man up and down.

The man grinned. 

“You wanna get out of here?” he asked Ianto. 

Ianto nodded. He rose and walked with the man through the mass of writhing bodies to a deserted stairwell. 

The man pushed Ianto up against the wall and pressed his lips to Ianto’s. Ianto grabbed the man’s waist and pulled him closer, kissing back hard. He pushed his crotch into the man’s, rubbing against him desperately.

“What’s your name?” the man gasped as he broke away.

“Jack,” Ianto lied. “Yours?”

“Sam,” he said. Then he went back to kissing Ianto, moaning when Ianto reached down to palm the front of his pants.

Ianto opened the latch of Sam’s pants and pulled down the zipper. Then he undid his own and pulled out his cock. Sam grabbed it and stroked it, leaving Ianto’s mouth to suck and bite at his neck. 

“Rubber?” Sam moaned.

“What?” Ianto said, breathless.

“Do you want to use a condom or not?” Sam asked.

Ianto nodded and pulled Sam back in. He pulled at Sam’s lower lip with his mouth and sucked it, the way he used to do with Jack.

Fuck.

He couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t have meaningless sex in the back of a nightclub because just a thought of Jack had ruined him for everyone else. He felt stupidly guilty, even though he hadn’t even seen Jack in years. 

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, letting go of Sam and shoving on his pants. “I can’t do this.” 

Then he turned and ran away, too ashamed to look at Sam. He darted through the streets of New York, not pausing until he reached their building.

Gwen was fast asleep, splayed out on the bed, snoring softly. He pulled off his coat and went to go take a shower. 

He couldn’t sleep next to her while smelling of alcohol, sweaty, and still hard. When the cold stream of water hit him, he finally cried, the rush of emotions he’d been holding back hitting him for the first time today. When his erection finally went down, he walked out of the shower, toweled himself dry, and put on clothes to head to bed.

As he climbed in, Gwen stirred. She rubbed her eyes, rising up to talk to him. Ianto pushed her back down gently. 

“Hey, where did you go?” she asked sleepily. 

“Nowhere,” he replied, kissing her forehead. “Go back to sleep.”

* * *

On Ianto’s thirtieth birthday, he told Gwen that he never expected to make it that far. It should have been cause for celebration. The fact that he’d reached thirty and broken that dismal Torchwood statistic was incredible. 

The celebration was undercut by the fact that they were never going to see Jack again. Gwen was never going to see Rhys, and Ianto was never going to see Jack, so what use was there in rejoicing if the people they loved couldn’t be with them? Gwen bought him a cupcake, and they sat in their flat and shared it silently. There was no celebration, mainly because it didn’t feel like one. 

He still remembered the night before the Rift took them. Gwen had curled up on the sofa upstairs, and the two of them had descended to Jack’s little sleeping pit. He’d refused to have sex with Jack, out of embarrassment that Gwen might hear, and passed out next to him. They were going to go back to his flat after and make up for lost time that night.

There was no more time. It was probably the worst regret of his life. 

* * *

It was a Saturday. Ianto and Gwen sat in front of their new television, about to turn it on, when they heard it. A low creaking sound that increased in volume until a blue telephone box appeared out of nowhere. The door slammed open, and there walked out one Jack Harkness. 

Gwen stared in shock. 

“Hey, kids!” he said and pulled them up to gather them both into a hug. Gwen felt frozen to her feet, and Ianto must have felt the same, because he didn’t move either. “Too mad to give me a hug? I know I’m a month late, but the Doctor said that he got as close as he could.”

“A month?” Gwen asked incredulously. 

“Yeah, about a month. Sorry about that but it just couldn’t be helped. It looks like you’ve made a nice trip out of it though!” Jack said, still holding them. 

“He thinks it’s been a month.” Ianto’s voice came out weakly. Jack let them go to stare at them, confused. 

“Look at me properly,” Gwen managed to say. 

Jack finally took a good hard look at her. His eyes widened. Shakily, he slowly extended out his arm to brush back Gwen’s hair behind her ear and lingered there. He touched the silver strands extending from her temple, then turned to Ianto. Trembling, Jack reached out his other hand to cup Ianto’s cheek gently. He quietly ran his thumb over Ianto’s lips and traced over the slope of his cheekbone. 

“How-” he said, breathing out softly. “How long?”

“Seven years,” answered Ianto quietly. 

Jack inhaled sharply, cupping both their cheeks with his palms. A single tear ran down Gwen’s face, and he used his thumb to wipe it away. 

She didn’t think she could hold back any more, so she pulled Ianto with her back into Jack’s arms. Gwen plastered herself to one end of Jack’s body while reaching out to hold Ianto’s shoulder. Ianto melted into Jack’s other side, and his head fit into the crook of Jack’s neck, while his hand wrapped around Gwen’s hip. 

Jack kissed them both on the tips of their heads, like he had done years ago when the Daleks stole the Earth. She clung to them as hard as she could, softening into Jack’s warm embrace. All three of them were openly sobbing now, holding each other as close as they could possibly be. 

They didn’t speak. No words could accurately summarize the way she was feeling. Hope returned and that relief flooded her body, until she could no longer stand it. Nothing would ever be the same again. But it was fine, because she was going home.

She was really, truly, going home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading my very self-indulgent fic! Kudos/Comments are appreciated!
> 
> Find me on tumblr [here](https://violetmessages.tumblr.com/)


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